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Plethora, Surplus, and Overabundance |
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 Well, today I have a plethora of information for you. OK, maybe not a plethora. Maybe a surplus, or even an overabundance. Well, OK - four things. What do four things account for? Eh... who cares...the point is, I have four things to talk about today. Two tips, one interesting bit of info, and one bug (or feature). So enough on the tangent of if is this a plethora, a surplus, or a overabundance, and on to the information.
(Incidentally, I would like to assure you, that I will not use the words plethora, surplus, or overabundance more than one more time in this story. Also, I would like to point out that when I used the words plethora, surplus, and overabundance in the last sentence, that did not count as the one and only time I promised I would use the words plethora, surplus, and overabundance. And, although I used the words plethora, surplus, and overabundance twice in that last sentence, and once already in this sentence, none of those count towards that promised "one more time". It is safe to say I will only use the words plethora, surplus, and overabundance one more time in this story, starting now.)
The first bit of info I have for you is a tip for iTunes. If you like the way iTunes has shuffled your playlist while using the shuffle feature, you can right-click on any of the songs, and choose "Copy To Play Order". That will make the current order of the songs, the default order. This option will, of course, only be available if you have the playlist shuffled.
The second tip I have promised is also for iTunes. It is a way to back up and recreate your iTunes playlists. Rather than me type the whole thing out (partially because it has already been typed out, and mostly because I am lazy) here is a link to the knowledge base article that tells how to do this. And a big ol' plagiarized copy and paste from said article:
Backing up playlists
Follow these steps:
1. Open iTunes.
2. Select one of your playlists from the Source list.
3. Choose File > Export Song List. A Save dialog appears.
4. Choose XML from the Format pop-up menu.
5. Choose Desktop from the Where pop-up menu.
6. Click Save.
7. Repeat steps 2 through 6 for each of the playlists that you have created in iTunes.
Note: These smart playlists are created automatically by iTunes, so you do not need to back them up:
60's Music
My Top Rated
Recently Played
Top 25 Most Played.
Recreating the iTunes Library file
Follow these steps:
1. Quit iTunes.
2. Locate your iTunes folder. It is at either ~/Documents or ~/Music.
Note: You may need to check both locations. The tilde (~) character to represents your Home folder.
3. Open your iTunes folder.
4. Drag the following files from your iTunes folder to the Trash:
iTunes 4 Music Library
iTunes Music Library.xml
Any other iTunes Music Library files that are in your iTunes folder (for example, you may still have iTunes Music Library files from older versions of iTunes).
5. Open iTunes.
6. Choose File > Add to Library.
7. Navigate to the folder(s) where your music is stored in the window that appears. By default, all music is stored in the iTunes Music Folder in your iTunes folder.
8. Click Choose.
Restoring playlists
Follow these steps:
1. Choose File > Import.
2. Navigate to and select one of the exported playlist files on your Desktop.
3. Click Choose.
4. Repeat steps 1 through 3 for each of the playlist files that you have exported to the Desktop.
Important: Some playlist information, such as My Rating and Play Count, is not preserved.
Now for the interesting information I promised in this story, according to knowledge base article number 93312 Even if you decide to not renew your .Mac subscription, your username and password will still work for certain services. No not e-mail, or iDisk, but iTunes Music Store purchases, iTunes Music Store authorization or deauthorization, iChat, Apple Store purchases, and iPhoto purchases. So even if you decide .Mac isn't worth a Benjamin (US) a year, at least you won't be out all the services.
While taking note of that knowledge base article I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I found a bug (or feature) of Safari, and that is the basis for the last part of my story. When you drag a Website address from Safari to the desktop, it creates a file with a link to that website. The file's name takes the title of the Webpage you are on. But if that title starts with a dot, such as knowledge base article number 93312's title does, that file will be invisible. This is because in OS X, (or any variant of Unix for that matter) to create a file that is hidden, you put a dot at the beginning. I created about 6 links to that page before I realized what was happening, and then had to go into Terminal and delete them.
Now there are about eleventy-billion ways to take care of this problem, but the one that I am going to mention is to copy the URL, then open text editor, and paste the URL. Then just highlight the text and drag it to the desktop. Now you have the same link, with the url as the name. And you can change it to whatever you want. Just don't put a dot at the beginning of the file name, or we are right back where we started now, aren't we?
Well, that is all for today, except for one last thing: plethora, surplus, and overabundance. There - I kept my promise to only say plethora, surplus, and overabundance one more time.
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September 30 2003, 12:50 PM EDT, by
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Comments:
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| Jonahan |
10/1/03, 4:28 PM EDT |
Ha! I have an overabundance of fermunda cheese, if anyone would like some.
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| iKen |
10/1/03, 11:38 PM EDT |
You know I love cheese! That would be a surplus of good! Sometimes, when I am along, I like to sit down and eat an overabundance of cheese. and... um... plethora. yeah...
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| speedyrev |
10/2/03, 12:41 PM EDT |
Have you tried putting your overabundance of surplus plethoras on Ebay?
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| iKen |
10/2/03, 3:24 PM EDT |
no I haven't speedyrev, but that is a damn good idea!
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| new to OSX |
10/2/03, 11:02 PM EDT |
I tried the 'dot' trick to create a hidden folder; we all have need for a hidden folder or two don't we? ;-) But I get a message saying that those names are reserved for the system. ?
Any clues? I'm using OSX 10.2.6
Also, I love the smorgasbord of adjectives you used iKen. :)
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| iKen |
10/2/03, 11:38 PM EDT |
hmm... looks like you can't do it from the finder "new to OSX" What you can do however, is create the folder, name it whatever you want, for this example we will call it test. Then open terminal, (/Applications/Utilities/) and move to that directory with the "cd" command. For example, if you made the test folder on the desktop, type "cd ~/Desktop/" (the ~ means home folder) then use the unix move command "mv" to rename the folder by typing "mv test .test"... and overabundance of confusing unix commands? Sure... but it isn't to bad. It will allow you to have a surplus of hidden folders. Or a Plethora of hidden files. ok... I was stretching there...
One more thing, I was thinking about how to get in to a folder once it is hidden, and then only way I can think to open said folder is to use the go to folder selection under the go menu... is this what you were thinking?
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| new to OSX |
10/3/03, 6:23 PM EDT |
Thx, that is what I was thinking of. That is certainly an overabunance of unix commands, but I am enjoying the learning experience. :-)
BTW, I could not find it using the "go to" , but it worked with "find" ,searching for items that aren't visible. I didn't even know that was there. Thanks again. I just love learning new things, especially on my Apple. :-)
Have a good weekend everybody.
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Just because swans mate for life, I don't think its that big a deal. First of all, if you're a swan, you're probably not going to find a swan that looks much better than the one you've got, so why not mate for life?
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